indicus
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Linux Mandrake lilo problem
I have a compaq deskPro 5100, Win98SE, and Mandrake share the drive I installed both OS's, with Lilo in the MBR, but then I installed PQ's BootMagic, which I like very much, and it over wrote the MBR.
I have tried going into that part of the setup and instead of installing Lilo to the MBR, install it into the first sectors of the Linux partition. This didn't work. I have made the rescue and boot disks, but I am lost as to setting up lilo to boot from the linux parttion rather than the MBR, and using the liloconf, to set it u, rather than blowing the whole thing away to reinstall. How do I rescue this lilo setup?
I have tried going into that part of the setup and instead of installing Lilo to the MBR, install it into the first sectors of the Linux partition. This didn't work. I have made the rescue and boot disks, but I am lost as to setting up lilo to boot from the linux parttion rather than the MBR, and using the liloconf, to set it u, rather than blowing the whole thing away to reinstall. How do I rescue this lilo setup?
if your BootMagic managed to identify your linux boot partition and you can boot linux through that boot manager, then don't bother to install lilo at the MBR or other linux partition. but if you want to restore the old state of your mbr, then use the command /sbin/lilo -u or fdisk /mbr.
ASKER
That is the thing, even though the boot manager will recognize the linux partition, if I choose that partition at boot time it just sits there. My theory is that I loaded lilo into the MBR rather than the first sector of the linux partition, at the time of original setup. Basically what I want to do is load lilo into the first sectors of the linux partition, or in essence when I choose the linux OS from the Boot Manager, that it will come up, since the BootManager resides in the MBR, lilo cannot, it has to go somewhere else, but where?
Although Boot Magic recognises your linux partition, it does not know where to find your boot image. Firstly boot up linux (with a rescue disk). Change the lilo.conf file so that lilo is written to hda? where ? is your linux root partition. As lilo will be directly run by BootMagic, you should remove other operating systems and only leave linux. Then run lilo. Reboot your system if you need to configure boot magic from another operating system (eg Win98) and reconfigure boot magic so that it reads your linux partition. Therefore when you select linux in Boot Magic, it reads lilo from your linux partition and then starts up.
ASKER
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ASKER
O.K. so far so good...I like that idea, now you wrote, and I quote "Change the lilo.conf file so that lilo is written to hda? where ? is your linux root partition."
Now How in detail do I change lilo.conf, again I must apologize for my newbieness. That's why I'm asking the questions, and you guys are answering them. I really do want to learn Linux but I need to run Win98, even if it is a trimmed down version, I am using it for testing, and code debugging. total Win98SE install is +-175Mb, just for debugging files. No Internet Explorer or other MS addons. Linux will be the Main OS for this machine. but I do need details, as so far the farthest I have gotten on Linux witht hat particular machine is installation!
Thanks again for your pacience and help.
Now How in detail do I change lilo.conf, again I must apologize for my newbieness. That's why I'm asking the questions, and you guys are answering them. I really do want to learn Linux but I need to run Win98, even if it is a trimmed down version, I am using it for testing, and code debugging. total Win98SE install is +-175Mb, just for debugging files. No Internet Explorer or other MS addons. Linux will be the Main OS for this machine. but I do need details, as so far the farthest I have gotten on Linux witht hat particular machine is installation!
Thanks again for your pacience and help.
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Friebele is right. In /etc/lilo.conf change the line
boot=/dev/hda
to
boot=/dev/hda?
And since lilo is now going to be sort of a chain loader you might want to consider changing some other options to. Look at "man lilo.conf" and read about the boot, timeout, delay and prompt keywords.
boot=/dev/hda
to
boot=/dev/hda?
And since lilo is now going to be sort of a chain loader you might want to consider changing some other options to. Look at "man lilo.conf" and read about the boot, timeout, delay and prompt keywords.
ASKER
Thank you for the walk through, I had gotten as far as booting w/ the rescue disk before, when I first encountered the problem, but I didn't know how to edit lilo.conf, but I am sure that I can stumble through it now that the picture is a bit clearer. I have noticed that the rescue boot up severly limits what I can do. Just learning...and havin' fun.
Thank You all for the help.
Thank You all for the help.